title: Reversal of fortune: surgical management of transposition in the pre-arterial switch era.
abstract: The development of operations for transposition of the great arteries (TGA) culminating in the eventual success of the arterial switch operation (ASO) remains one of the most intriguing demonstrations of ingenuity in the history of cardiac surgery. Very early attempts at switching the great arteries were daring but unsuccessful. This early lack of success with the ASO proved daunting, and yielded to "venous" switches, with increasing success. These venous switches evolved into the atrial baffle procedures, which began in the first golden age of TGA surgery of the 1960s and 1970s. The continued quest for an anatomic correction resulted in other clever operations before the modern era of the ASO.
authors.affiliation: University of Tennessee Health Science Center/Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery, Memphis, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Steven P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Goldberg
keywords: arterial switch operation; congenital heart surgery; great vessel anomaly; history